Two Men Arrested Near Folsom Dam, (20 miles of Sacramento, Ca.)

KCRA TV, Sacramento, Ca ^ | 11 Oct 2001, update 12 Oct 2001 | KCRA Staff

[Hemlock]

If they were illegal fishers, my bet is legal or illegals from SE Asia. These people since they came over after the fall of South Viet Nam, have been openingly violating many fish and game laws. The PC Fish and Game Managers and local judges have kept the Fish and Game Wardens from doing their jobs. The warders would arrest them for very serious violations. The left wing extremist judges and their buddies the ACLUers would get the cases thrown out of court inspite of tremendous evidence of poaching and killing fish or game out of season!

I know this isn't a fishing thread, but I wanted to confirm your post. This has been a problem in the South Bay as well. At Calero Reservoir, these people have been known to use very long, illegal bamboo poles to catch and keep fish that are undersized and contaminated with ostensibly dangerous levels of mercury. This despite signs posted everywhere.

[Phil V.]

(50,000 acre ft/reservior)(44,100 cft/acre ft)(6.8 gal/cft)(4 liters/gal)[(60x10e-6 gm ricin/dose)/(1000gm/dose)]= 3,500 liters ricin/reservior (to two sigfigs)

(50,000 acre ft/reservior)(43,560cft/acre ft)(7.48 gal/cft)(3.79 liters/gal). . .

Of course a detailed statistical study based on actuaries weighing cost- benefit analysis considerations probably do not depend on precise conversions - just a lot of fog and conuuzzion.

[Carry_Okie]

I guess I could call your response a constructive error! Although my deep memory failed, the original answer is given to one significant figure because of the tolerance in the assumptions. To use more precise numbers implies more precision than is warranted. See what happens when one tries to look smart?

[Phil V.]

I guess I could call your response a constructive error!

No. It was neither constructive nor in error.

It was smartassed and deliberate.

[Grampa Dave]

There was a lake in the East Bay that had huge Striped Bass in it, 30 to 50 #ers.

Most of us released these stripers, and the kill to eat fishers concentrated on the planted trout. The community that we are talking about heard about the stripers in this lake. In a few months they caught and killed all of them. Besides the massive legal kills during the daytime. Apparently they sneaked in at night when the stripers really strike because no fishers are in that park. Vans would come up to the gates to load up bags of huge and dead stripers.

If these fish were sold to fish markets, the end users got a whole lot of chemicals that humans should not eat!

[Trident/Delta]

Ricin, a poison derived from the castor bean, is one of the deadliest poisons. but, pound for pound, pure refined nicotine has the highest lethality index in a water base. Only 10 ppm is required for nicotine lethality, while over 300 ppm is required for Ricin.....

Snap quiz... what deadly nerve gas is based on Ricin?????

Answer: Sarin

Semper Chemical

[Carry_Okie]

I have a problem with that assertion. First, it addresses concentration not dosage, something no toxicologist would do. A 30-60 microgram dose of ricin is lethal. I spoke of a 60 microgram dose dispersed in 1 liter of water as lethal (which is certainly rather dilute, considering the supposed objective).

It took a truckload, contrary to the assertion that I was testing out of purely, objective curiosity.

Second, the pages on nicotine dosage, that I investigated pursuant to the claim, stated that a fatal dose of nicotine was ten times higher by weight than that published for ricin.

I understand the problems with dispersion and have no knowledge of what might be done to accomplish that in a reservior with either substance, particularly given the possible addition of surfactants or other delivery mechanisms (microencapsulation for example) that might change the picture radically (I don't have a water/ricin phase diagram). Given the volume of an average reservoir is as I suggested, I think that in either case, ricin or nicotine, that the analysis successfully refutes the assertion that a fatal contamination of a reservior can be accomplished easily with a small amount of material.

It takes a truckload.

Further, ricin has been confiscated in large amounts at the Canadian border. I have seen no similar reports for nicotine. So unless you can show me an error in that analysis, as far as I can tell, the mass analysis still stands; i.e.,

It takes a truckload.

[Trident/Delta]

you are entitled to your opinion. mine is based on DOJ data sent to my department. I am not a chemist or toxicoligist. But I trust the DoJ more than I trust ramblings on FR.

Semper Fi

[Carry_Okie]

Oh you of too much faith in the grubbamint:

" All substances are poisons. There is not one that is not a poison. The correct dose differentiates a poison and a remedy". (Paracelsus 1493-1541)

The McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology [11] lists the following list (I am not going to make a table just for you Trident/Delta. I coule not find a list with both ricin and nicotine, suffice it to say that ALL the data I found has confirmed what I have said in my "ramblings."):

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sci/chem-faq/part2/section-3.html

"Approximate Median Lethal Doses of Some Toxins per kg of Bodyweight"

Toxin; Dose; Test Animal

tetanus; 1 nanogram; mouse, probably human

botulinal neurotoxin; 1 nanogram; mouse, human

shigella; 1 nanogram; monkey, human

shigella; 1 microgram; mouse

ricin; 1 microgram; human

diphtheria; 100 nanograms; human

diphtheria; 1.6 milligrams; mouse

Ricin is a toxin lectin and hemagglutinin isolated from the castor bean. Merck reports the lethal dose in mice as 1 microgram of ricin D nitrogen (ip) per kg, and that ricin molecular weight is about 65,000. Ricin has been shown to contain four lectins, of which the RCL III (aka Ricin D ) and RCL IV are the toxins. Merck also reports the following LD50 per kg of bodyweight:- http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~ehs/chptxt.htm

ACUTE TOXICITY OF SOME TYPICAL LABORATORY CHEMICALS

 

SUBSTANCE	ACUTE TOXICITY (RAT LD50) mg/kg
MERCURIC CHLORIDE	1
AFLATOXIN B1	5
POTASSIUM CYANIDE	5
SODIUM AZIDE	27
NICOTINE	50
FORMALDEHYDE	100
HYDRAZINE	129
PICRIC ACID	200
PHENOL	317
ATROPINE	500
ACETALDEHYDE	661
ARSENIC	763
BENZENE	930
LEAD CHLORIDE	1500
EDTA	2000
ACETONITRILE	2460
XYLENE	4300
METHANOL	5628
ACETONE	5800
ETHANOL	7060
IODINE	14000
GLUCOSE	25800
GLUTAMINE (L-)	80941

1 microgram of ricin per kg of body weight, versus 50 milligrams of nicotine per kg of body weight. Just in case you don't want to do the math, that data makes ricin 50,000 times more toxic than nicotine.

If you continue to doubt it TD, order an MSDS for each of these substances from your vaunted EPA labs. When they get back to you in two weeks (if you are lucky), let me know what they said.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Would it, however, survive the chlorination stage?

A more sinister scenario would be not to contaminate the reservoir, but to pump a contaminant into the water main from a building that is connected to city water.

[Dixielander]

Actually some of the scariest garbage I have seen fishing has been the white trash in some remote areas.

Wonder why the Clintons were out there?

Sorry, Grampa, I simply couln't resist.

[185JHP]

So that "two drops of pure nicotine on a dog's tongue will kill it" thing wasn't an urban legend, huh?

[Grampa Dave]

The day that I see the Clintoons in the back 40 while fly fishing. I will stop fly fishing!

[Carry_Okie]

Lets assume that the minimum threshold dose is 75 micrograms, almost the same amount as for a fatal dose of ricin. That means you would need 15 or so 55 gallon drums of pure LSD for our hypothetical reservoir. One would have to make sure that the reservoir was small and that it was the sole supply for the target urban area.

Have at it. Might I suggest your local university water supply where it wouldn't even be noticed.